WIndows Photo Viewer freezing

[Dchiches]

Installed fresh 3 instances of Windows 7 Enterprise RTM and on all three Instances (Dell 620 Laptop, Dell xps 410, Dell Mini 10) Windows Photo Viewer Freezes when scrolling through multiple JPG files within a folder.

The freeze last for about 30 - 60 seconds. During which Windows photo viewer is completelty frozen. Mutliple attempts to move the window of click to advance to the next picture will gray out the application and you'll get prompted to wait or close the application. Within 60 seconds, the Windows Photo viewer will respond again and then generally you can finish viewing all the pictures in the folder within issue. Go to a different folder with JPG files, and the same issue occurs.

Looked at Task Manager during this freeze and no process is doing anything including Explorer.exe.

Tried installing Windows Live Photo viewer and its worse where even explore locks when this freeze occurs.

has anyone seen this issue? Any help would be appreciated as this is annoying.

DaveC

 

[James M. Fisher]

Sorry to hear about your problem, Dave. I have never experienced this behaviour with Windows Live Photo Gallery on Windows 7. I have just fresh-installed Windows 7 Professional today and I will be downloading the Windows Live programs soon. I'll keep an eye out for any odd behaviour.

 

[Ian]

It works ok for me too. Is there anything in common between all 3 installs, for example is there any 3rd party software installed at all? Or are you browsing the same network share from them all?

 

[James M. Fisher]

Just installed Windows Photo Gallery Live on a new Win7 Pro install and it scrolls smoothly and quickly.
Just for fun, go to Disk Cleanup and choose to delete 'Thumbnails'. Restart the application and let it rebuild the thumbnails and see what happens.
BTW, do you have a lot of digital images? I have about 5500 on my laptop.

 

[Dchiches]

Thanks for the quick replies.

To answer Ian,
I am Browsing the pictures over a network share on the Three Devices to my server hosting the content. I was doing the same with both the Laptop and Desktop when they were running vista Ultimate SP1 and I did not have these issue.

My network is a 1 GB network and the Server hosting the content is running Server 2008 R2. Maybe something to do with Server 2008 R2. didn't think of that. Let me move some photos to a 2003 Server and see what happens. I'll also move the photos to the local drive and see if the issue goes away. My gut assumes this a network related issue which slowing something down.

The only common appication thats on all three devices is my anti-Virus. I am running Avast Home edition on each of my devices. Maybe I'll remove it from one and see if makes a difference.

To Answer James,
I did delete the thumbnails but that didn;t help. It repeated the problem for the folder. It looks like that maybe the problem causing the issue, the creation thumbnail DB file for the folder. Once its created the stall goes away.

I'll look into this issue some more. good to know that it looks like I'm the only one having this issue so its something I'm doing.

Thanks again for your responses

DaveC

 

[Ian]

I am Browsing the pictures over a network share on the Three Devices to my server hosting the content. I was doing the same with both the Laptop and Desktop when they were running vista Ultimate SP1 and I did not have these issue.

My network is a 1 GB network and the Server hosting the content is running Server 2008 R2. Maybe something to do with Server 2008 R2. didn't think of that. Let me move some photos to a 2003 Server and see what happens. I'll also move the photos to the local drive and see if the issue goes away. My gut assumes this a network related issue which slowing something down.

The only common appication thats on all three devices is my anti-Virus. I am running Avast Home edition on each of my devices. Maybe I'll remove it from one and see if makes a difference.

I think that's a good idea to try and isolate anything common to all machines, let us know what progress you make and hopefully we can get this fixed

 

[Dchiches]

Problem definetly has to do with the thumbs.db generation within the folder over a netwrok share when vieweing the photos within the folder for the first time.

When the pausing of the Windows Photo viewer occurred I could see during the duration of the pause the thumbs.db file appear with a 0 byte size and then disappear. Once it disappeared, the pausing stopped. Any time i went back into the same photo folder, the pause would no longer occur.

Modified the the following local policy on the workstation and the issue went away:
Turn off the display of thumbnails and displayicons on network folders &
Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thunmbs.db files

Now I can view photos without any pausing. So it looks like Windows 7 is handling the generation of thumbs.db differently then Vista

DaveC

 

[Ian]

Great bit of investigation there Dave - thanks for reporting back with the solution

 

[konst1977]

still slow

I have the final release of the OS (the one that was release in October or smth). And my picture viewer also freezes for like 30-60 seconds, especially when going back to the previous photo. I can't believe that Microsoft hasn't fixed it yet, pitching the OS as the best ever for consumers and stuff.

Dchiches, where do I do this?

"Modified the the following local policy on the workstation and the issue went away:
Turn off the display of thumbnails and displayicons on network folders &
Turn off the caching of thumbnails in hidden thunmbs.db files"

I guess the first one in folder properties. But what about the second one? I don't use any network, just my local laptop.

Thanks

 

[Dchiches]

These 2 settings are WIndows Policies. I'm going to assume you are running Windows 7 Home or Home Premium which does not have GPEDIT.MSC to manage Policies like this.

Just google these 2 settings and you'll eventually find the Registry keys which you can manually modify to disable these settings.

Let me know if you can;t find them. I'll dig them out of the policies. Just being lazy right now. Sorry.

 

[HunterNIU]

I am having the same issue with one difference: I am not using network drives.

All my photos (and there's only about 1000) are stored on local hard drives.

I have used Disk Cleanup to clear thumbs and used GPEDIT.MSC to turn off the cache of thumbnails in hidden thumbs.db files.

I still experience the freeze after scrolling through 2 - 4 images.

 

[Dchiches]

I still have this issue from time to time even with the thumbs caching turned off. I've attributed the issue to when WinRar is running. Not sure why this causes the freeze, but it does for me.

 

[miscbiz]

I realize this is several years old but when I searched the issue I landed on this forum.

The issue for me was that Avast was scanning and locking up the Windows Photo Viewer, Specifically the COM Surrogate or dllhost.exe process. Under File System Shield Settings you can add an Exclusion for this executable.This should work for most other antivirus software as well if scanning this executable is what is freezing up the Viewer.

With all AV exclusions there may be some security risk involved, but that's for you to decide.